


Andoralis

by Bullfinch



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, fluff and also sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 10:59:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4302201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bullfinch/pseuds/Bullfinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke and Fenris come to Skyhold for the Summerday festivities. After all they’ve been through, it feels odd to celebrate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Andoralis

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: An entirely pointless jumble of a story that was very fun to write. It’s fireworks-themed so it should have gone out around the 4th, apologies for lateness. There are a few references to my previous stories but they’re not all that important, no worries.

Fenris lets out a loud, resonant cough.

Hawke lands beside him, leans against the tower, and sticks his hands in his pockets. The coil of rope falls at his feet, and Fenris nudges it with his heel, pushing it under the edge of the blanket.

Cullen appears on the stairs and steps onto the battlements. “Evening.”

Hawke replies with a jaunty “Lovely weather, isn’t it?” that mostly obscures Fenris’s mumble. Cullen seems preoccupied, and retreats across the battlements to his office with no further remarks. As soon as his door swings shut, Hawke scoops the rope onto his shoulder and starts climbing the wall of the tower again.

The fourth attempt seems no more laborious than the previous three. Hawke scales the tower with practiced ease, his fingers clamping tight to the jutting stones, his boots just catching their edges. Fenris returns to his watch on the stairs. The lively babble of conversation floats up from the courtyard, where all of Skyhold is gathered for the Andoralis feast (Summerday, it’s called outside of Tevinter, Fenris remembers). Here and there he catches a phrase or two of a quick gavotte, the melody agile and sweet, and below he can pick out the dancing couples, drifting across the green like water striders over the surface of a pond.

Then something slaps down on his shoulder. The end of a rope. Up above Hawke waves.

So Fenris slings the blanket over his shoulder, glances once more at the staircase, and starts climbing. His bare toes find purchase readily on the uneven wall, and the rope is rough-made and coarse but his palms are calloused enough not to be injured. He goes as quick as he can, and at the top Hawke helps to haul him over the parapet. Fenris starts pulling the rope up but freezes when a soldier jogs up the stairs, clutching a scrap of parchment. Fervently he hopes she lacks the curiosity to investigate the length of line swinging in the breeze. Hawke giggles into his back, wraps both arms around his waist.

She turns and heads straight for Cullen’s office. Fenris lets out the breath he’s been holding and starts coiling the rope around his arm. “A close call, but it appears we are safe.”

“Good. This is a  _perfect_  spot.” Hawke takes the blanket from Fenris’s shoulder and shakes it out, laying it on the roof.

Fenris approaches Hawke’s bag and seats himself next to it, searching around. “A loaf of bread, a—“ He unwraps the brown paper. “—is this an  _entire_  leg of mutton?”

Hawke wilts in shame. “You know how hungry I get.”

“I suppose I can’t be surprised,” Fenris mutters to himself. He’s fairly sure Hawke weighs well over fifteen stone. “And a bottle of wine.” He squints at the label, parsing the letters out. The name sounds Antivan, and the ink is in gold. “Where did you get this?”

“I…stole it.”

“Hawke, you steal everything. Where did you steal this  _from_?”

Hawke doesn’t respond until Fenris arches an eyebrow at him. Then he heaves a great sigh. “The Inquisitor’s personal stock.”

_“What?”_

“Listen, she and I aren’t on the best of terms all right?”

“So you thought this would make things better.”

“I’m not particularly interested in making things better. You’ve seen her. She’s  _unnerving_.” Hawke sits on the blanket and gestures for Fenris to come over.

So he does, bringing their dinner. “She is…ambitious.”

“I’m only about ninety-five percent sure she doesn’t want to take over all of Thedas.”

“Is that why you’re so adamant about not joining the Inquisition?”

“Fenris, you know I have problems taking orders.”

Eminently true. Fenris uncorks the bottle and takes a swig. “Hm. It is quite good.”

“Give it here.” Hawke puts his hand out.

The pillaged supper is superlative. Hawke dives into the mutton, and his beard is covered in red wine glaze by the time he’s done; he spends nearly as much time scrubbing himself off as he does eating. Fenris picks apart his roasted half-poussin, uncurling the strands of dried rosemary garnish, peeling off the crunchy skin to save for last. The choux crème are heaped sadly at the bottom of the bag, all the filling squashed out into the paper wrappers. But that is easily remedied, and Fenris swipes a finger along the white paper, gathering the the sweet cream.

“Maybe we should take a vacation,” Hawke suggests, having long finished with his half of the choux. “Stay here for a while. Stuff ourselves with as much Orlesian cuisine as we can keep down.”

Fenris licks the last of the cream from his fingers.  _Take a vacation._  It’s a foreign concept to him, not one he’s ever considered with any seriousness. Leisure time is something to be hoarded in between killing or trying to avoid being killed. He wipes his hands on the blanket, thinking. Would he enjoy a vacation?

“Although—I don’t think I’ll be starting right away.” Hawke clutches his middle. “After tonight, I’m not going to eat again for a week.”

“Somehow I doubt that. Your appetite is profound.”

A groan. “I  _know_ , you don’t have to tell me. All that running around in Kirkwall and I  _still_  had a paunch. The price of being rich.”

Fenris shrugs. “I liked the paunch.”

“Oh, now you’re just trying to make me feel better.”

“No, truly, I did.” Fenris had had enough of hard edges by that time, and it was nice to have a few soft things in his life.

“All well and good for you, you couldn’t grow a paunch if you tried.” Hawke gestures at the remnants of the poussin. “Look, I was afraid I hadn’t gotten you enough food and you didn’t even eat it all.”

“I grew up on nothing but scraps. I suppose I have adapted.” He sits against the parapet.

Hawke lies back, resting his head in Fenris’s lap. For a few moments they stay there in silence. Skyhold is chaotic even with Corypheus dead and gone—especially so for the Champion of Kirkwall and his companion—and Fenris is rather grateful they managed to escape the Summerday gathering in the courtyard. This is much preferable, everything distant, the chatter of conversation, the rolls of laughter, the bustle of children running or couples dancing, all far below. The only things close to them are a few curious birds and the soft touch of the mountain breeze.

Hawke takes Fenris’s hand and kisses it. “Are you happy?”

“Am I—what?”

“Are you happy?”

“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know, I just want you to be happy. You’ve—had a rough go of it. Since we left Kirkwall.” Hawke twines their fingers together, resting their hands on his own chest.

“We both have. But that was our choice, wasn’t it?”

“We chose to fight,” Hawke mutters. “We didn’t choose to be—captured, or—poisoned, or re-educated.”

Fenris sighs. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we have the privilege of deciding who hurts us and how. And anyway, I will bear it, if our actions are truly helping people.”

“You shouldn’t have to bear it. You’ve been through enough.”

“I’m still here, aren’t I? With you.”

Hawke gazes up at him for a moment, his eyes dark in the twilight. Then he rolls on his side, pressing his face into Fenris’s stomach.

Fenris slips under the hem of Hawke’s shirt and rubs his back. The air is cool but Hawke, as always, is warm. Fenris finds a dozen scars, his fingers tracing raised lines or rough patches of skin. He recognizes a few of them—a memory of Kirkwall drifting to the surface, a summer morning when they woke wanting each other, came together without saying a word. And afterwards they lay naked and sweaty with the silk sheets tossed up around them and the covers piled on the floor, the room too hot, the sun streaming in bright through the lace curtains. And Fenris traced the scars on Hawke’s back and asked,  _where did this one come from? And this one?_  And Hawke murmured the answers into his pillow.  _Carta, when I was working for Athenril. Burn from one of the Profane. Jumped off a waterfall near Lothering with my eyes closed—yes, I know, I’ve always been a bit of an idiot._

There are a half-dozen new ones now. Fenris knows he must have helped to patch up the wounds but he can’t remember which ones happened when. It all blends together—first the templars, then the forces of the Divine, slavers, Qunari, highwaymen who made the mistake of stopping them on the road. An endless stream of enemies.

The other half of Hawke’s back, of course, is destroyed. The only healer they could find after Larannis was a mundane one, and while she was able to coax the massive burn into healing quickly, the resulting scar tissue is a mess, a swirled mass of gnarled white and red that smooths out just before it reaches his spine. Hawke insisted on taking a look at it as soon as he was healthy again, and after that he wouldn’t let Fenris see it anymore—no more playful stripping down, no more sly glances or perfectly innocent displays of his muscular body. Less the vanity, Fenris suspects, than the reminder of the events that caused it, four dozen deaths for which Hawke refused to blame anyone but himself. It took weeks before, both of them sitting by the fire, Fenris at last pushed Hawke’s shirt up his back, as Hawke pressed his face into his hands and wouldn’t say a word. And Fenris kissed every knot of flesh, every eddy of contracted skin. The muscle beneath was tensed in—fear, shame, something of both.

Then he embraced Hawke and murmured “I love you” into his marred shoulder, and felt the tension start to dissolve.

Now Hawke is utterly relaxed, likely ready to settle down into his post-supper nap. Fenris tries to think back to that time, when the darkness was wrapped close around them, had been there so long they thought they’d never shake it. Yet now, with all of Skyhold carousing below, with Hawke curled up against him, he finds that he can’t put himself back there. That he knows what it was like but can’t remember how it _felt_  to have hope so decisively denied them.

A glimmer of light catches Fenris’s eye. He leans down. “Look. They’re lighting the lanterns.”

The first one rises skyward, the little flicker of fire a bright orange-white beneath the waxed paper bell of the lantern, the trapped hot air propelling it higher and higher. The cupped flame swings back and forth in the wind, but the poppy-red paper glows vibrant and full against the deep purple sky. A second lantern appears, and then three more.

Hawke’s on his back now, watching. “Damn it all. I should’ve stolen one of those too.”

“Yes, and then all of Skyhold could watch it floating off from the top of this supposedly deserted tower.”

“Good point,” Hawke concedes.

The sound of conversation grows louder. Fenris would go check the battlements but Hawke is on top of him so he’s stuck where he is. “The show will be starting soon. People are coming up.”

“The battlements are going to be packed. Aren’t you glad you’re with someone who can scale walls?”

Fenris rolls his eyes. “Yes, yes, we’re all very impressed.”

Hawke sulks. “It  _was_  impressive. I had to do it fast so no one would see.”

“I remember. I was there,” Fenris reminds him.

“Ungrateful,” Hawke mumbles.

The tower is only perhaps thirty feet high but it might as well be a hundred. No one knows they’re hidden away up here, with nothing between them and the emerging stars. Fenris feels a bit like he’s sitting in a chalice raised for a toast above a vast dining table where all the guests are crammed together elbow-to-elbow. He squints in the twilight across the fortress—on the battlements opposite, a line of robed figures assembles. That will be the mages.

Then the first swathe of color appears in the sky.

At first it’s little more than a glittering blotch in vivid yellow-green, but then jagged streaks spear out from the center, their texture resolving into something reflective and crystalline. Fenris recognizes the depiction of a rift; he and Hawke have strayed too close on a few occasions, though they never stayed long. Demons spout from it, the shades shimmering with silver so they’re not lost against the dark sky, the needle-sharp terrors spidering out like frost across a glass. A flare of molten orange as a rage demon erupts into being, with a despair demon following in burst of snowflakes. They march around the rift, their limbs twisting in a macabre dance. Rasping screeches and liquid rumbles echo off the walls of the courtyard below, mixed with the gasps and exclamations of the spectators.

Then a harmonious chord as an elven woman appears, wearing a cloak of velvet red. All of Skyhold explodes into cheers.

Hawke just sighs. “Well, I suppose she is exceptional at her job, even if she is a bit terrifying.”

She raises her hand to the rift, vibrant energy sparking between her mark and the malevolent crystal. Fenris shivers suddenly, while Hawke twitches and raises his arms.  _“That_  is pretty amazing. Look, all my hair’s standing up.”

Whatever the mages are doing, it’s potent. The air crackles with energy, as if the mages have summoned from the unknown foundations of the fortress a tide of ghosts that rise now over the gathered revelers, brushing phantom fingers over their skin.

More shocks of color lash the sky, each shape textured by the subtle seethe of a million tiny spots of light and constructed in painterly strokes. A great hulk of red and black looms next, met with a chorus of boos. That would be Corypheus, although Fenris suspects the man himself was less bug-eyed, and his laugh not quite so maniacal. He and the Inquisitor square off, energy in green and red gushing over their backs…

Then the scene dissolves, and something new appears from the cloud of glittering dust. A familiar skyline.

“Oh.  _No.”_  Hawke goes rigid. “They didn’t.”

Kirkwall is lain out above them, although Fenris remembers the reality as somewhat less aesthetically pleasing. The mages take the image into Hightown, where a broad-chested figure stands proud.

Fenris bursts out laughing, unable to stop himself. Hawke groans in utter mortification. “This is Varric’s fault. It has to be.”

The dashing hero strides through the streets, cloak flowing behind him. At his side figures materialize one by one. First, a dwarf bearing a truly regal crossbow, provoking another cheer. (Hawke snorts in disbelief— “Varric is  _not_  that tall.”) Then a woman with two shining daggers strapped to her back, and another in heavy armor, her hair glowing a brighter orange than even the rage demons did. A slight elven girl, carrying a staff (Fenris rolls his eyes and mutters, “Varric must have left out the fact that she was a blood mage”). And then—

Hawke smacks Fenris’s leg and points. “There you are!”

So he is. Dark and slim, appearing right at Hawke’s side. Unlike Varric, he has not received an amendment to his height, and he looks as tiny next to Hawke as he ever has. Fenris understands now how Hawke felt a moment ago, seeing his image parading around in front of hundreds of people. Even worse is the unmistakable surge of cheering.  _What?_

Hawke is cackling. “They  _really_  like you.”

“How? I don’t know any of these people!”

“Must be Varric’s book. I’ve read bits and pieces, you come off quite well. Very mysterious. Read it, you’ll see why they all love you.”

“Hm. I expect their opinions would change if they actually met me.”

“Nonsense! You’re the likable sort.”

Fenris can’t let that stand. “That is  _objectively_ false.”

Hawke hesitates, then recants. “Well—in your own way. You know.” He scans the sky again. “Let’s see, there’s six of us—so the only one missing is…” He trails off.

Fenris squeezes his hand.

_Anders._

Now the battle with a monstrous version of Meredith has begun, and the mage still hasn’t appeared. Nor is he likely to. He is, after all, a murderer and an abomination.

And the one failure Hawke seems determined to carry with him for the rest of his life.

Fenris wonders how Anders comes off in Varric’s book. If the last chapter begins with the broken Chantry, the bystanders stricken, and Anders spouting out his manifesto like it’s a lungful of poison he’s relieved to exhale. And a few paragraphs later, he sits hunched and alone, hands clasped, expecting a knife in the back. Only to have Hawke kneel before him and embrace him so tightly Fenris thinks he might be crushed—that would solve their problem, at least. And Hawke repeating into his shoulder, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” and Anders asking, bewildered, why in Andraste’s name  _Hawke’s_  the one who keeps apologizing.

“D’you think…” Hawke looks past Fenris, away from the light show, out into the darkening sky. “D’you think, with the Circle disbanded, that Anders might be better now?”

Hawke isn’t the type to seek comfort over reality. Still, knowing he wants the truth doesn’t make it any easier for Fenris to say it out loud. “We don’t even know if he’s alive anymore. And even if he is…we both saw him, those last years. That  _thing_  had consumed him. I…he’s gone, Hawke.”

Hawke seems at peace, though he’s been carrying the guilt so long it’s probably become less a burden than an instinct. “He was a good man.”

Fenris recalls that brief period when he and the mage were nearly getting along. Fenris had lost some of his vitriol by then, and had conceded, finally, that being Darktown’s only reliable resident healer took no small amount of selflessness. They no longer spent all their time snapping at each other, and even the coolness had begun to dissipate—Fenris thinks he might even have laughed at one or two of the mage’s jokes.

And then Vengeance killed that girl in the tunnels, and Anders closed himself off from everyone else. He started picking fights with Fenris again—and Fenris could  _see_ it,  _knew_  that it wasn’t genuine enmity but a strategy to push him away. But Anders had deployed some nasty barbs— _are you just jealous of our magic? Those tattoos of yours not good enough for you?_ —and Fenris was more than happy to rise to the bait if it meant bleeding Anders with some barbs of his own.

In truth, Hawke was the one who bled. He just kept trying. It might have worked, in part. But not enough.

“Yes,” Fenris replies. “A good man.”

They’re silent for a while, watching the scenes sliding by above them. The Inquisitor travels from rocky highlands to sun-scorched deserts to the high cliffs overlooking the Waking Sea. Fenris leans against the cool stone of the parapet and strokes Hawke’s hair.

The final battle is utterly chaotic. The mages throw everything they have at the star-spotted sky. Fenris has been preoccupied, and he lost track of the events some time ago; but he recognizes the clash for what it is. The depiction is certainly more artistic than accurate, but it’s quite beautiful. He wonders how much it took out of this squadron of mages to put on such a show. To think they would sacrifice so much power for something so insubstantial.

The applause and the whooping last for some time. Fenris neither claps nor shouts. Hawke is asleep.

At last the clamor recedes into a buzz of excitement as the spectators start to descend the battlements. Fenris listens to the murmuring as it quiets, yielding to the chirp of insects, the faint whistle of the wind at his back.

Alone again.

He thinks of the cheering that went up when his image appeared in the sky. Strange. Very strange.

Then he leans down. “Hawke. It’s time for us to retire for the evening.”

“Mm.” Not the smallest twitch of movement.

This…will be difficult. “Please. My legs have fallen asleep.” A half-truth—only one of them is asleep.

“Mmm.” Hawke drags himself off of Fenris and curls up on the stone.

A small step, but a step nonetheless. “Come. I can promise you our bed is much more comfortable.”

“Hmm.” Hawke rubs his mouth, eyes still closed. “You’ll have to carry me.”

Fenris snorts. “An excellent plan, if you’d like for us both to go plummeting to our deaths.”

“No,” Hawke moans, and embraces Fenris’s leg, hugging it to his body. “Don’t plummet to your death.”

Fenris allows his limb to be appropriated. “Then wake yourself up and come to bed.”

After a great deal of rather unnecessary complaining, Hawke is upright and the roof is clean of any traces of life. The tower wall is obscured by dark, so they must both use the rope to climb down, and it’s left hanging.

Fenris peers up at the parapet where the rope’s still anchored. “Do you think they’ll guess it was us?”

“Considering our no doubt conspicuous absence from the feast? Maybe.” He shrugs. “Well, it’s not the most objectionable thing I’ve done recently.”

As they walk back across the courtyard, they pass a pair of fiddlers, still playing a sweet, sad song in the gathering dark. A handful of couples remain, holding each other close, swaying gently. Hawke kisses Fenris’s hair. “You know what the greatest Summerday tradition was in Ferelden?”

“What?”

“Marriage.”

Fenris looks up, startled. Hawke’s grinning at him. Of course. “No.”

“You—no what?”

“I’m not going to marry you.” He pushes open the door and steps inside.

“Did you just—reject my proposal?” Hawke follows close behind. “But we’re in love!”

“I have no desire to get married.” Fenris must halt and let Hawke take the lead, as he hasn’t any idea how to navigate this damned place.

“But why not?” Hawke turns down a narrow corridor. “That’s generally what happens next in these situations.”

Fenris pauses, thinking how best to explain. “I…haven’t had a normal life. And I feel as if trying to fit myself into one would be—I don’t know. Like pretending none of it happened. Like it was all fine, or easily forgotten. When it isn’t. Not to me.”

Hawke stops by their door—marked by a knocker that holds only half a ring. “I…I’m sorry. I hadn’t thought about it.”

Fenris follows him inside and kicks the door shut, then starts peeling off his clothes. “No need to be sorry. It’s not something I speak of often. I can’t say I wear my scars proudly.” Undressed, he climbs into bed, finding himself very tired. “But it’s better to wear them than to hide them.”

Hawke crawls in next to him. “I understand.”

Fenris sighs. “I’m the one who should apologize. If you wanted this…”

“No, don’t worry.” Hawke rests his head on Fenris’s chest. “I don’t need a wedding. All I need is you.”

For a moment Fenris feels as if he’s up on the tower again, so close to a thousand other people yet separated from them by a wall no one else can climb. No one but Hawke.

But it doesn’t matter. Hawke is enough.


End file.
